


Bring Me Home

by skypirateb



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 04:03:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11096505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skypirateb/pseuds/skypirateb
Summary: How Persephone ended up in Hadestown in the first place.





	Bring Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for isacchilli's birthday, because I love having and excuse to write Hades/Persephone and also to give people things.
> 
> Thank you to daasvedanya and saturninepen for the beta.

Of course she had heard of him before the day he slipped under her momma’s defences and found her in the garden. He was the family’s dirty little secret: they had to get the gold from somewhere, even if no-one wanted to talk about it. It didn’t matter that his name was taboo by the time she had grown, that some people avoided saying it out of fear. Family secrets have a way of getting around, especially when a family is built on secrets.

 

Not that Persephone ever really cared. What was he to her, except a relative she never knew.

 

He took the breath out of her the first time she saw him. He was taller than anyone she knew, and his hair was black as earth, and his skin was white as bone.

 

He kissed the back of her hand carefully. She had been working with the daffodils, with her hands covered in pollen. The way he bent his head made her want to put her hands all through his hair, and see a mess of gold through the black.

 

When he kissed her on the mouth her world fell apart. With a sharp clarity she knew that she was on the brink of something, finally—that maybe her life could be more than what it was, that she could be more than a cousin or a daughter or a girl.

 

They hardly spoke but they clung to each other, kissing hard and hot and wanting. She had never understood why Momma had warned her off men. She knew now. She knew she would follow him to Hell and back to make him love her, merrily selling out every beloved family member along the way.

 

It thrilled her.

 

“Come home with me,” he said hoarsely. “I can give you everything, I can crown you the Queen you are. They should be cutting their own throats to worship you.

 

Persephone looked up at her home, peaceful and comforting in the dying afternoon sun. The same as it had been her whole life.

 

“Yes,” she said, the word slipping out of her before she could stop herself. “Yes, Hades.”

 

•••

  
  
The car he lead her to was long and low, and black like oil. He held the door open for her, but the way he smiled made the gesture seem sarcastic. She gritted her teeth. Why was he doing this, if he thought she was some kind of silly pampered girl? Or was he doing it because he thought she was a silly pampered girl?

 

The inside of the car was as sleek as the outside. She could see her distorted reflection in the polished walnut dashboard. The leather passenger seat took her form like it been her particular seat for years.

 

He slid into the other side. The space between them necessitated by the gearbox was hilariously chaste considering what had passed between them in the garden, how he had seduced her. Considering what they were doing now.

 

The engine rumbled as he turned the key. She gripped the edge of the seat. Her heart was racing. She was leaving. She was actually leaving.

 

At the last moment, she thought to look back. She twisted in her seat, but the were already over the crest of the hill: all she could see was the very top of the farmhouse, the low sun glancing off the windows blindingly. As far as she could tell, her absence hadn’t been discovered. Wouldn’t be discovered for several hours, if they were lucky.

 

“Having regrets so soon?” His voice made her shiver, all deep and quiet and gravelled. It made him sound hard and weary.

 

“No.” Persephone turned to look out at the road. “Not at all.”

 

•••

  
  
The romance wore off considerably after four hours in the car.

 

She had never really travelled by car much. Sure, Momma had a ratty old pick up, and there was a choleric tractor they sometimes used on the farm. But if Persephone wanted to go anywhere, she was expected to walk. They didn’t have the means to be burning gas on gallivanting about the countryside, and anyway, walking was good for young people. It gave them a healthy constitution. The farthest she ever went by car was the twenty minute ride into town every Saturday morning for the market.

 

This road was rough in places, but even that might not have been so bad without all the hairpin turns. The leather of her seat was making her stick to the seat with sweat, and the intense smell of gasoline that filled the car was nauseating. She wanted to crack open then window, but she couldn’t work out how, and she was embarrassed to ask.

 

She sneaked a glance at Hades out of the corner of her eye. If he felt the journey like she did, he didn’t show it. His jaw was set and his eyes were fixed on the road ahead of them, or at least, the little of the road he could see in the jaundice-coloured glow of the headlights. He hadn’t spoken for over an hour.

 

Persephone took a deep breath. “How… how much longer, do you think?”

 

“We’ll drive through the night,” he said without looking at her, “and arrive in time for the first ferry.”

 

She groaned before she could stop herself. The idea of being stuck in the car all night was horrifying. He glanced at her, surprised. Then he said, “You’re turning grey.”

 

“Am I?” Things around her were beginning to wobble a bit, as if she was looking at them from underwater.

 

He was silent for a few moments. “I’ll stop at the next town,” he said finally. “There’s a motel there where we can stay for the night.

 

It made her feel guilty, but not enough to try and make him change his mind.

 

•••

  
  
Calling it a town was generous. At best, it was a way stop—a couple of gas pumps, a weather-beaten payphone, a single storey motel that looked like the kind of place where people were murdered in their sleep.

 

Persephone stepped out of the car when Hades stopped it. Within seconds she was shivering violently in the cold night air. It was a relief after the hot sticky stink of the car, but it also made her realise how little she had thought this through. She hadn’t even grabbed a cardigan.

 

Hades was next to her suddenly. Her teeth were starting to chatter and she wished she could make them stop; she didn’t want him thinking she was a scared little girl.

 

“Do you want to stay here?”

 

She blinked. “Y-You mean, the n-n-night?”

 

He looked at her blankly for a long moment. “While I book us a room.”

 

“Oh.”

 

She was too embarrassed to follow him after that, but he did leave her his jacket draped over her shoulders.

 

•••

  
  
The room was small and smelled like mildew. The only furniture was a bed that looked as exhausted as Persephone felt and a pair of chipped bedside cabinets. A Bible sat on top of one of the cabinets.

 

There was a WC in the corner. Hades washed his face in the yellowing basing without bothering to close the door. Persephone sat on the bed gingerly. Home wasn’t exactly lavish, but she never thought that anything was unclean. Here she was half expecting to pull back the covers and find the mattress heaving with lice.

 

Hades wiped his face off on his shirt. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t trust the towels either. “We’ll leave at first light.” He sat next to her on the bed. “You look less grey.”

 

She gave him a small smile. “I feel less grey.” He was studying her openly, and she was surprised that she could meet his gaze without flinching. His expression was calm, but there was something about his eyes that made him seem agitated. “Are you alright?”

 

A muscle in his jaw twitched. Moving before she could think about it, Persephone leaned closer, and kissed his jaw, and his chin, and then his mouth. His sighed softly and kissed her back—not hungry and desperate they had kissed in the garden; now he was gentle and tender and maybe a little cautious.

 

“Are you afraid?” he murmured when she pulled back.

 

She knew the answer immediately. “No.” Then something occurred to her. “Are you?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

•••

  
  
They left when the sun was just crawling into the sky, the light skimming the tops of the pine trees outside.

 

Persephone had slept in her sun dress. She splashed water from the basin over her face and wiped down her neck and armpits while Hades was paying for the room. It wasn’t enough. She was desperate for a hot bath.

 

Her sleep had been fractious. The mattress was lumpy, and she wasn’t used to sharing a bed. It seemed like every time Hades had shifted in his sleep she had jolted awake. And her dreams had been disturbing: vivid images of wolves ripping apart a body, blood muddying the ground, and someone screaming.

 

Hades held the passenger door open for her. Instead of smiling sarcastically he looked past her blankly like a dead man walking. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his shirt was badly rumpled. Obviously he had slept about as well as Persephone had.

 

Instinctively, she slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him. She pressed her face against his chest. He smelled like the car, and like dust, and there was the smell of something else underneath that must have been the smell of him.

 

Hades froze momentarily, and then chuckled. He put a hand in her hair and tipped her head back to kiss her forehead and her eyelids. “You’re going to be dangerous for me,” he said, his voice sending a shiver through her body. “I can tell.”

 

“Oh?”

 

He smirked faintly. “Yes. Get in the car.”

 

“What makes me dangerous?” she asked as he pulled out of the carpark.

 

He took so long to answer she thought maybe he had ignored her. It was a personal question, after all. Tapping the steering wheel, he finally said “You’re kind.”

 

She blinked. “And you aren’t?”

 

He gave a bark of laughter. “No, Persephone. I’m not.”

 

Hearing him say her name made her melt. “You’ve been kind to me.”

 

“I’ve seduced you,” he corrected.

 

“Well, I think I seduced you back.” That made him smirk again. She pulled her feet up to curl up on the seat. “And you got me free.”

 

“People won’t see it that way,” he said. “They’ll say I kidnapped you.”

 

“Then people are wrong.”

 

“Mmmm.” More steering wheel tapping. “Where we’re going isn’t a nice place. It makes men hard. It breaks people, and it breaks their hope. When it doesn’t break them it makes them hard a cruel and selfish. It’s a place people go to die.”

 

Persephone resisted rolling her eyes. “And you’re what, the mayor?”

 

A tight, lopsided smile. “King.”

 

•••

  
  
The drive was easier now: flat, endless, barren. A single telephone wire ran alongside the road, undulating at each battered pole. Hades pointed out a railroad track as well, almost out of sight, running parallel to the road.

 

She dozed. She could still feel the heat of the car and the grinding of the road, hear the rumble of the engine. Her thoughts wandered lazily, like a compass searching for north, through feelings and memories and dreams.

 

Fresh apples from her momma’s orchard.

 

Aunt Hes’ fireplace burning through the winter.

 

Her legs aching in a race against Artie.

 

Polly singing on a sultry summer afternoon.

 

Momma’s hands braiding her hair.

 

Momma clutching her in a warm, bosomy hug.

 

Momma.

 

When she roused herself, her cheeks and eyes were damp.

 

•••

  
  
It was dusk when Hades pointed ahead.

 

“We’re close.”

 

Persephone squinted in the dying light. There was a road sign coming up fast.

 

WAY DOWN

 

HADESTOWN

 

10 MILES

 

•••

  
  
The river was wide and choppy, and grey as ash. Persephone gripped his hand tightly as they picked their way over the stones on the shore. At the end of a rotting dock, an ancient ferry bobbed in the water, manned by a single person. The boat pitched dangerously as Hades helped her step aboard.

 

She didn’t remember much of the crossing, and she didn’t want to. It was worse than driving through the gorge.

 

But Hades kept her close. That was something she did remember. He put an arm around her shoulders and spoke in murmurs beside her ear. She couldn’t remember what he said, but it didn’t matter. Having his voice to focus on made the tension unknit from her shoulders, her stomach settle, her breathing calm.

 

On the other side, he helped her step gingerly onto the ground. He brushed her sweaty bangs off her forehead. “We can go straight home, if you want. I can draw you a bath and have a bed made up for you.

 

“No.” She grabbed his hands in hers. “Show me Hadestown.”

 

•••

  
  
Everything was built with stone.

 

It surprised her, though she couldn’t really say why. She had seen stone houses before. Perhaps it was the sheer number of them? Row upon row of slate and schist dwellings leaning on and over each other, balanced like card houses.

 

When she commented on it, Hades said, “Nothing much grows here, and we need wood to burn fires. Stone is cheap. There’s always plenty down in the mines, we just have to keep pulling it up.”

 

The whole town was built on mines. They ran deep under the ground, carving out the earth to get at the metals and gems that Hades coveted for one reason or another.

 

“Gold, obviously,” he said, “and iron. People like iron. Those things we can sell for food. Full orders means full bellies, at least for another few months.”

 

The rivers too gave up their riches on his command. Along the shoreline, Persephone could see people panning listlessly at the waters edge, sifting through silt and stone for flecks of precious metals.

 

“There are five rivers in all,” he told her. “The water is different in all of them, and so it does different things to people.”

 

Persephone gazed out over the miners who had waded into the currents. “What does it do to them?”

 

“This river makes them forget. That’s why it’s popular.”

 

“And the others?”

 

“The others are less kind.” He turned away, walking back up the bank. Persephone followed him. “The Styx is the largest,” he said as she caught up. “It runs for hundreds of miles around. A natural border. The only way to cross is the way we came.”

 

Persephone was panting lightly as they summited the hillock above the river. “What if people cross anyway?”

 

Hades rubbed his jaw. “Barbed wire, hound dogs, the Wall.” He shrugged. “Getting in isn’t so hard. It’s getting out people struggle with.” He looked back down towards the miners. “People come here with everything, but if they ever leave, they leave with nothing.”

 

Persephone followed his gaze. She could still see the workers, with their hollow faces and blank, unfocused expressions. Their movements were repetitive and the milky, swirling current didn’t seem to bother them. In fact, they didn’t seem to care very much about anything at all.

 

“Shouldn’t they be in their homes for the night?”

 

Hades looked at her. Then he said, “Doesn’t make a difference to anyone around here whether it’s day or night. The work still needs to be done.”

 

•••

  
  
She could see for miles from Hades’ bedroom.

 

Most of it was mines, riddling the landscape with craters that plunged deep into bedrock. She could appreciate how far they spread, how cramped and small and insignificant the simple stone dwellings looked in this context. The houses were surrounded by dry, brittle scrub on arid land. A single spark would have set everything ablaze. But then, if the houses weren’t wood, and the people weren’t living, fire wasn’t much of a danger.

 

“Are there coyotes here?” Howling echoed in the distance.

 

“No. That’s my dog.” Hades was sitting behind her, carefully unlacing his shoes. “You’ll meet him later, if you want.”

 

Not tomorrow; later. Like there weren’t days here, like time meant nothing.

 

A sob escaped her. She sank to her knees. The enormity of what she had done suddenly overtook her. She was hundreds of miles from home and everything she had ever known with a man she had met two days ago. She was in a dead land that the living were too afraid to mention by name. There was no work for her here, no food, no cousins, no Momma. There was a Wall that reached farther than her Momma’s control ever could. She had done exactly what Momma always warned her not to: let a man turn her head with promises of riches and adventure.

 

No. She couldn’t think like that. She had asked for this, chosen this. She had said yes to Hades for a reason. For months now being at the farm had felt like a trap. It had nagged and sawed at her sanity, made her pace like a bear trapped in a cage; like there was no room for her to stretch, let alone grow.

 

This land was dying, dead. The soil was barren. The sun didn’t shine. The people were broken.

 

There was room to grow. There was room to be more than a cousin or a daughter or a girl. There was room for a Queen.

 

Hades was looking at her, his expression guarded. “Are you…?”

 

Persephone blinked away her tears. Carefully, she stood, pushing her feet into the floor as she stretched herself tall. “Hades,” she said, her voice strong and steady, “I wanna make this place better. I wanna be your Queen.”

 

•••

  
  
It was months before she heard from home.

 

Hermes came in on the first train one day, with some kinda proclamation in his hand that she was being made to go home.

 

It made her blood boil. She cussed Hermes out something fierce for his efforts. He was only the messenger? Well he could give Uncle Zeus her own message, loud and clear.

 

Damn them all to Hell.

 

In the end, it was Hades who made her leave, even though she could see it was breaking him to say the words. “I know what they say about me, Persephone.” He thumbed her cheekbone. “I’m not giving them the satisfaction of being right.”

 

“But you are those things,” Persephone insisted. “You told me that when we met. Cruel and hard and not-nice-at-all Hades.”

 

He sighed. “And I also said you were dangerous for me.” He kissed her cheek, her eyelids, her mouth. “You’ve made me soft,” he murmured. “Soft and weak as any man.”

 

“So you’re just gonna roll over?” she said bitterly. “Just give them what they want, like they aren’t going to try and turn me back into some stupid little girl?”

 

Hades chuckled. “I’d like to see them try. You were never a stupid little girl.” He kissed her again. “You were always a Queen.”

 

She clutched a hand in his hair as she kissed him hard. “Promise me you’ll fix it up for me,” she said fiercely against his mouth. “Raise Hell. Swear it on your own life if you have to.”

 

“I will, if you want me to.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “But you don’t need to make me swear anything. You should know by now that I live for you.”

 

“Then come find me. _Please_ , Hades.” She squeezed his hands one last time. “If I’m not back by the end of summer…”

 

He kissed her forehead. “Then I know where to find you.”

 

○○○

  
  
The sun was dipping lower and lower every day. Leaves changed slowly from green to yellow to brown, and scattered from the branches at the smallest sigh of wind. Plants were dying back, retreating into the soil where they would be sheltered from the cold.

 

Summer was ending.

 

On a cold, sleepy morning, Persephone finished packing her bag. She looped a long knitted scarf around her neck. Aunt Hes had made it for her; it was the deep ruddy pink of pomegranate flesh. She remembered to take a cardigan.

 

Her Momma drove her to the station in the ratty old pick up. Momma wept openly as they stood on the platform and hugged goodbye. Persephone was sad to be leaving home, and sad that Momma was so hurt. But she could also feel her heart doing a little jig in her chest with excitement.

 

Hermes came down the line to hustle her aboard. She kissed Momma’s cheek and gave her one last squeeze before she alighted with a skip in her step. She pushed down the window as the train screamed to life, and waved vigorously as they pulled away from the station.

 

Leaving was always hard. It had been years, and it never got any easier. But the excitement never lessened, either. She leaned out the window to catch the wind with her hair as they sped across the landscape.

 

She grinned as she thought of Hades waiting for her at the end of the line, with gifts and food and his kisses.

 

_Come on, husband_ , she thought. _Bring me home to Hadestown_.


End file.
